A Prophet - Chapter 26 (Part 1)

Chapter 1 - Secrets of Blind Fortunetelling

I unburdened myself of this heavy weight, and the boulder in my heart finally dropped. I cherished my wife and children all the more, knowing they were my life's true wealth. The happiness of life lies in the ordinary: after finishing dinner, brewing a pot of tea, and gathering with the family around the television, chatting and laughing merrily.

In the 1980s, several television dramas were wildly popular. One was Journey to the West, another was Eight Immortals Cross the Sea, and the third was Ji Gong. All of these shows revolved around demons, ghosts, immortals, and Buddhas.

Sometimes, my daughter would lean close to me and ask earnestly, "Dad, are there really ghosts in this world?"

I would smile and say, "My good daughter, people are far more terrifying than ghosts. Ghosts never harm anyone, but people will hurt others."

The girl would ask again, "Then are there really immortals and Buddhas in this world?"

I would smile again and say, "Those who do good deeds are gods and Buddhas."

"Dad, the neighbors all say you know how to fortunetell. Why have you never told our fortunes?" my daughter asked foolishly.

"That's right, Dad, tell my fortune and see if I can get into university in the future," my son chimed in.

I glanced at my son, pulled the girl into my arms, touched her nose, and said, "You, Mom, and your brother are your father's very life, you know that, my good daughter?"

My daughter blinked and nodded.

My son walked over and said, "Dad, our classmate's grandfather is amazing. People line up every day to have him tell their fortunes, especially on weekends when lots of cars from far away park right outside his door. Dad, you should show off your skills too and take him down a peg."

"Get back to your room and read your book!" I barked.

My son rolled his eyes. "Sigh, an old steed in the stable..."

"Go read!"

My son turned around and went into his room.

I knew the person my son was talking about. He was a blind man whom everyone called "Dragon-Phoenix." No one cared what his actual name was. Besides being blind, he was also hard of hearing and muttered to himself all day long. People gave him the nickname "Deaf-Madman," meaning both deaf and crazy, but over time, the nickname morphed into the auspicious moniker "Dragon-Phoenix."

Dragon-Phoenix inherited the techniques of the blind fortuneteller lineage. Fortunetellers can be divided by physical condition into the blind school and the sighted school. The blind school consists of blind practitioners, while the sighted school consists of sighted people.

Blind-school masters possess a set of fortunetelling formulas passed down since ancient times. These formulas have no written records; they are transmitted purely by word of mouth and can only be taught to the blind. Otherwise, once sighted people learn them, they would steal the rice bowls of the blind.

One unique specialty of the blind school is determining life and death. Ordinary fortunetelling techniques struggle to accurately determine when a person will die. Whether practicing the Eight Characters or the Six Yao hexagrams, they can only broadly point out years with major disasters. Even in facial reading, practitioners try to avoid reasoning about life and death, because life and death are things everyone can verify—if the prediction misses, the fortuneteller loses all credibility.

Yet blind practitioners dared to make these predictions. This specialty reportedly originated from Guiguzi of the Warring States period. When Guiguzi first created these formulas, he established the rule that they were to be taught only to the blind and never to sighted people. For thousands of years, the blind masters' formulas formed their own independent branch. Countless sighted people throughout history tried to learn this skill, resorting to deception, eavesdropping, and heavy bribes, but none succeeded. After the 1980s, some rising stars in the study of changes hoisted the banner of the blind masters' formulas simply to make money. To deal with such people, only one trick was needed to expose them: give them the birth characters of a deceased person and ask them to read it. If they could accurately state the year the person died, they were true blind practitioners; otherwise, they were frauds.

When Grandfather was in Shanghai back then, he was also deeply interested in the blind school. He once consulted a blind master in person about many questions. One of the sharpest questions was: If blind masters can directly determine the year of a person's death based on their birth characters, how do you explain the fact that people with identical birth characters do not die in the same year? Many people are born in the same year, same month, same day, and same hour, yet their destinies differ drastically, with their times of death differing by decades, or even twins dying several years apart. How is this explained?

The blind master pondered for a moment and said, "The method of fortunetelling relies on the generation and restriction of the Five Elements, much like blind men touching an elephant—it only sees one aspect. Many factors influence a person's destiny: the accumulated virtue of ancestors, the accumulated virtue of parents, one's own cultivation of virtue, and even the social environment all play enormous roles. I wonder if Grandfather believes in Buddhism. Having been in this fortunetelling business for so many years, I've found that whenever a person's destiny undergoes a major shift, they are either a person of great benevolence or great malevolence."

Grandfather produced a heavy sum of silver, wishing to learn some formulas regarding the determination of life and death. The blind master smiled and said, "I advise Mr. Tieban not to do this. Everyone who tries to unearth this skill meets a bad end. This is a means of survival bestowed by the heavens upon the blind. Sighted people have hands and feet; doing anything casually provides a better life than ours. We never see any of the colorful sights of this world in our entire lives, and we don't even know what our parents who gave birth to and raised us look like. This is our only rice bowl; please leave us a path to survive."

Grandfather was so ashamed he wished the ground would swallow him. "Your instruction is well taken, Master! I will not learn the formulas. Please keep the silver. Hearing your words has benefited me immensely!"

The blind master let out a long sigh. "Sir, you are a benevolent man. The formulas cannot be told to you, but I can read your life and death for you."

Grandfather smiled. "What harm is there in living, and what sorrow in dying? As long as one's conscience is clear throughout life, when one lives and when one dies, where one lives and where one dies—what does it matter? A hundred years of human life is a flash in the pan. Whether glorious or obscure, it ultimately ends like the wind sweeping away withered leaves, vanishing into the clouds and mist."

"Ha ha ha ha. Sir has already transcended life and death. If everyone in the world were as carefree as you, there wouldn't be so much suffering in this world."

The set of blind-master formulas Grandfather wanted to acquire was called "The Horse Falls and the Lu Slants." Anyone in the art of numbers knew of it, but no one had ever seen it.

As history reached the 1980s, the field of Yi studies began to liven up again. Some people started plotting to get their hands on The Formula of the Fallen Horse and Slanted Lu because they found that after studying many fortunetelling techniques, they weren't very practical. They attended numerous study classes, spent a lot of money, traveled everywhere, and bowed to many masters, yet they still couldn't make accurate predictions.

Academia refers to the Yi-studies revival of the 1980s as the "Yi-studies fever." In the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, research related to Yi studies was still primarily academic. As for numerical divination, people did not dare bring it out into the open to discuss flagrantly.

Later, as the pace of reform accelerated further, some people dared to step into the forbidden zone of Yi studies and began researching fortunetelling. But the word "fortunetelling" was too sensitive, too superstitious, and sounded unrefined, so the word "prediction" came in handy. Fortunetelling was transformed overnight into predictive science. More cultured people even invented an even more elegant term—human body information science.

This was closely related to the social environment at the time. After mainland China opened up, ideas and theories from Hong Kong and Taiwan began to influence the interior. For the previous few decades, we had been busy with political movements while Hong Kong and Taiwan had not stopped their academic research. Some academic talents back then followed Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan and Hong Kong, where, in a relatively relaxed political atmosphere, they conducted pioneering research on traditional Chinese culture.

Traditional Chinese culture consisted of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. These subjects had cooled down on the mainland for a period of time, creating a misconception that persists to this day: that the roots of Chinese culture lie in Taiwan.

This was actually a misunderstanding. The reason was that mainlanders, having just emerged from the Cultural Revolution and lost a decade, suddenly felt a sense of cultural vacuum, whereas Hong Kong and Taiwan were bustling at that time. Scholars there could freely interpret The Analects, The Diamond Sutra, and The Tao Te Ching, and even openly practice fortunetelling and feng shui.

Mainlanders suffering from a cultural fault line instantly felt their eyes opened—the masters were all in Taiwan.

It wasn't until the late 1990s that this misunderstanding slowly thawed. People gradually realized that mainland scholars were no slouch compared to those in Hong Kong and Taiwan; they were simply more low-profile. Perhaps too much hardship made them more cautious and understated. Scholarship resides in the mind; even through ten years of imprisonment, this knowledge was effectively preserved. With the deepening of reforms, traditional Chinese culture was no longer a taboo topic to be whispered about, but something to be vigorously inherited and promoted. Soon, the mainland entered a cultural blowout period for the development of traditional studies.

At this point, Chinese people worldwide finally saw clearly that the roots of Chinese culture had never broken. Taiwan had them, but the mainland had them even more. Both sides of the strait shared the same lineage, and the descendants of Yan and Huang were one family—this was what Chinese civilization was all about.

The inheritance of culture across the Taiwan Strait also contained both essence and dross side by side.

The interpretation and research of orthodox Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism were positive and valuable; these things were more precious than gold. If they were discarded, the Chinese people would be left with nothing but yellow skin and black eyes. Meanwhile, the whole business of fortunetelling and superstition really ought not to have flooded back.

Once the doors of reform and opening-up swung open on the mainland, certain sorcerers from Hong Kong and Taiwan caught wind of it and swarmed over to the mainland to cash in.

Pity the mainland upstarts, who couldn't tell the genuine from the fake at all. The moment they saw Hong Kong or Taiwan "masters" dressed in tailored suits and speaking broken Mandarin, they were filled with boundless awe: "Master, take a look at my feng shui!" "Master, change my grand fortune for me!" "Master, pick a lucky name for our company!"

These people would never see that some of those so-called masters from Hong Kong and Taiwan, while glamorous on the surface, secretly sneaked into some mainland village behind people's backs to learn from mainland fortunetellers.

What people knew even less was that China once had a Grandfather who dedicated his entire life to fortunetelling, only to end up opposing it.

When Yi studies began to ferment in the 1980s, we old rogues of the "River and Lake Syndicate" had a premonition: another batch of swindlers was about to step onto the stage. History always repeated the same tragedy over and over again. When someone cried, someone else laughed. Set up the banner of yin and yang, and fortunetellers will naturally follow. Small-scale antics didn't matter; treating it like a game didn't matter either. But once things blew up—for instance, causing a death, involving fraud, or even developing into a cult—the government would have to step in.

Young people who had read too many novels and television dramas or listened to too many folk tales were all the more eager to leap into the fray, vowing to dedicate themselves to the cause of Yi studies. They wanted to devote themselves to research on Yi studies, only to take the wrong path right from the start. Yi studies did not equal numerology, let alone superstition. What they called Yi studies was not the philosophy of changes, but divination. They frantically bought street-stall materials, devoured various study classes indiscriminately, and knelt before masters everywhere, delusional about becoming otherworldly hermits.

Thus, the first army of fortunetellers after the Cultural Revolution emerged.

After these people thrashed about in the realm of numerology for a few years, a small number made a name for themselves, but the vast majority became cannon fodder, wasting their youth and achieving nothing. Yet they still refused to give up, convinced they simply hadn't learned the real deal. So, after exhausting every predictive technique taught by sighted people, they began turning to the very last corner of numerology: the blind school.

In 1985, the 72-year-old blind master Dragon-Phoenix took on an apprentice named Zhou Yulang.

This man was not blind, yet he feigned blindness. Coming from the north, he knelt before Dragon-Phoenix's doorstep for three days, eventually winning Dragon-Phoenix's sympathy.

He claimed he had been blind in both eyes since childhood and that his parents had died early. He lived with his uncle and aunt, but they treated him poorly. Wishing to live independently, he had come following his reputation to apprentice and begged the old master to give him a rice bowl to survive.

Dragon-Phoenix believed him, pitied his background, and poured out everything he knew to teach him. Zhou Yulang was indeed very smart, learning quickly with a super-strong memory. Within half a month—Correction: half a year—he had memorized all the formulas.

At the time, Fourth Bahtou, Seventh Bahtou, and I were puzzled: since Master Dragon-Phoenix was divine at calculations, how could he not have calculated that this apprentice was a fraud! What we expected even less was that Zhou Yulang's appearance would drag up a bloody feud from the past of the "River and Lake Syndicate."

After completing his apprenticeship, Zhou Yulang set up his own practice and began telling fortunes for people. Flying the banner of "Dragon-Phoenix's prime disciple," combined with formidable eloquence and quick wits, Zhou Yulang quickly made a name for himself, and streams of people came to his door for readings.

While frantically raking in wealth, Zhou Yulang also had to endure a specific agony: he had to pretend to be blind every single day. A man who wasn't blind deliberately put on a blind appearance, rolling his white eyeballs and feeling around with both hands whenever anyone came for a reading. His acting was so lifelike it was truly breathtaking.

The ancients said long ago: "Those with impure faculties cannot study the Tao." If numerology is reluctantly classified under the category of Taoist arts, then anyone studying numerology must first have an upright mind. Studying the Tao means learning how to be a person; if a person is not upright, their endeavors are bound to fail. When ancient people passed down teachings, they emphasized selecting the right person to instruct. Moral character was always paramount. If a suitable person could not be found, they would rather take what they learned in this lifetime into their coffins than leak a single fraction. This wasn't being conservative; it was the unwillingness to create evil karma, let alone cause people to bring about their own destruction.

Zhou Yulang wasn't blind, yet he pretended to be blind to deceive his master—this was the crime of betraying one's master and ancestors. Even more fatal was that he forgot the words Dragon-Phoenix had warned him with when he first learned the Tao: "When we tell fortunes for people, we only seek to fill our bellies. We are blind and cannot pursue other professions; this is our rice bowl. Therefore, our mindset must be upright. We cannot extort people's money, we cannot steal other men's wives, we say what should be said, and we don't say what shouldn't be said. The most important rule of all is to urge people toward goodness. Doing good is the only effective way to alter one's destiny."

In this colorful world, Zhou Yulang had long since thrown these words to the winds. Every day he sat upright and spoke eloquently. A divination cost 5 yuan, later rising to 10 yuan, and then 20 yuan. Wealth, sons, marriage, business, ancestral graves, official fortune—there was nothing he didn't meddle in. At his peak, he received over twenty clients a day, pulling in a monthly income of over a thousand yuan. At that time, a county magistrate's monthly salary was only 500 yuan; he earned double a magistrate.

Fullness breeds desires. With business booming, a person was bound to stray onto evil paths.

One day, a young and pampered housewife came to see Zhou Yulang for a reading.

"What are you seeking?" Zhou Yulang asked, rolling his eyes.

"Master, I want to check my marriage."

Zhou Yulang secretly glanced at the young woman, and his heart gave a thump. What a gorgeous woman! Her skin was tender and white, and her shoulder-length hair—not too long, parted on the side—exuded a gentle, refined air. She had a round chin and bright eyes, her entire body radiating an intellectual beauty. Her bulging chest further proclaimed that beneath her clothes lay a pair of breasts about to burst forth.

Zhou Yulang swallowed a mouthful of saliva, rolled his eyes, and said, "Mm. Marriage. Which year were you born?"

"1960."

"Which month?"

"The eighth lunar month."

"Which day of the eighth month?"

"The twenty-third of the eighth month."

"What time?"

"Past midnight, around 12."

Zhou Yulang shook his head. "Past midnight means it's no longer the twenty-third of the eighth month; it should be the twenty-fourth, as it has already entered the midnight hour."

"Oh, Master, I don't understand. Anyway, Mom said it was past midnight."

"Mm." Zhou Yulang raised his neck, narrowed his eyes, and pinched his fingers to calculate.

The housewife waited anxiously.

Suddenly, Zhou Yulang reached out and felt around in all directions, as if searching for something.

The housewife hurried to ask, "What is Master looking for?"

"It's nothing, nothing. Haven't had a sip of water since I got up this morning. I'll pour some water." With that, he stood up and groped toward the table.

The housewife immediately stood up, supported Zhou Yulang back down, and said, "Sit, please sit. I'll pour it for you."

Zhou Yulang smiled and said, "Wonderful, wonderful. Oh, marvelous."

The housewife poured a cup of water for Zhou Yulang and handed it over.

Zhou Yulang propped out both hands and felt around slowly.

Seeing how troublesome it was, the housewife directly grabbed Zhou Yulang's hand and said, "Master, it's right here," shoving the cup into Zhou Yulang's hands as she spoke.

Zhou Yulang seized the momentum to cup the housewife's hand and the cup together in his palms. "Oh, thank you, thank you."

If an ordinary person pulled a stunt like this, the housewife surely would have noticed, but the person before her was blind. Without giving it much thought, the housewife simply withdrew her hand slowly.

Zhou Yulang took a sip, then said, "Your destiny here is one of wealth and nobility. You are a wealthy person."

The housewife smiled bashfully. "I suppose so."

Zhou Yulang had long since noticed that the housewife was dressed extraordinarily and covered in jewelry, which was why he made this deduction.

"I calculate that you should marry late. You have too many romantic affinities in your destiny; you should only marry after age thirty. Otherwise, your marriage is bound to be bad."

"That's right, that's right! Master is right. I got married at twenty-one, and now my relationship with my husband is terrible."

"I calculate that your husband should be quite tall, with a fair complexion, and someone who eats official rice."

The housewife thought for a moment and replied, "He's not exceptionally tall, maybe a bit over one meter seven. His skin is neither particularly fair nor dark. He used to eat official rice, but later he quit his job and went into business."

The reason Zhou Yulang dared to make this prediction was because he saw that the housewife herself was not short—in China, husbands are generally taller than their wives—and since this woman had fair skin, she certainly didn't do farm work, meaning her husband wouldn't be a peasant either. In that era just after reform and opening up, anyone who wasn't a peasant could broadly be called an official-rice eater, given that businessmen were still a minority.

Nailing one out of three predictions was already enough. Zhou Yulang continued, "Your husband has had an affair, and so have you!"

The housewife lowered her head.

"Am I right?" Zhou Yulang pressed.

"Yes."

"I advise you to divorce immediately. Judging from your birth characters, this marriage can last at most three more years, and if it goes longer, something bad is going to happen."

The housewife was startled. "Is there no way to save it?"

"I'm afraid you'll lose both person and wealth."

"This..."

"If you stubbornly refuse to divorce, you will even face a disaster of life and death!"

The housewife was shocked. "A disaster of life and death?"

"That's right. The White Tiger sits at the head, bringing disaster and misfortune. Next year the White Tiger will be visiting you, and you might have to turn your head back."

The housewife was puzzled. "What does turning your head back mean?"

Zhou Yulang feigned impatience. "Turning your head back means having to go back, no longer living in this world, to die!"

The housewife's brow furrowed tightly.

Zhou Yulang continued, "This disaster is remarkably similar to a disaster you had in your childhood. I calculate that you had a major hurdle before age twelve, but you pulled through, didn't you?"

The housewife thought nervously. "No... no major disasters..."

"Think carefully. There definitely was one!"

"I had a severe illness when I was four years old. Does that count?"

"Of course it counts! That belongs to illness disasters, but you walked through it. Children have heavy roots and can withstand disasters; adults can't."

This calculation of childhood disasters was also a common trick used by fortunetellers. The world was already full of risks—floods, fires, car accidents, illnesses, and so on. In the course of growing up, a person was bound to encounter a few disasters, especially during early childhood: falling ill, falling into a water pit or cesspit while playing naughtily, tumbling off a table, or breaking a leg while climbing a tree or scaling a wall. An inquisitive and exploratory nature is a child's instinct, and external injuries are inevitable; everyone experiences them. But when these events passed through the mouth of a fortuneteller, they became divine heavenly secrets with an accuracy close to a hundred percent.

"Then... Master, can I guard against it?" the housewife asked.

"It's best to divorce as soon as possible. If you can't divorce temporarily, I'll give you a talisman first. Keep it on your person; it can at least keep you safe."

"That's wonderful! Wonderful! Thank you for the trouble, Master!"

Zhou Yulang groped inside his drawer, pulled it open, took out a red paper packet, and handed it to the housewife. "You must carry this talisman on your body every day. After forty-nine days, burn it. When you burn it, face the southwest direction, kowtow three times, and don't let anyone else see you."

"Okay, okay, I've noted it down! Master, seeing as you've gone to such trouble, how much money should I give you?"

Zhou Yulang tossed his head and said, "Listen to me, divination costs 10 yuan. As for this talisman, I had someone else draw it. I can't see myself, so I can only tell others how to draw it. These talismans must be drawn with cinnabar at midnight, when chickens don't crow and dogs don't bark. Therefore, I have to treat someone to a meal so they'll draw it in the dead of night. So for the money for this talisman, give whatever you feel is right, just something to show your intent."

The housewife fished out her wallet, pulled out a hundred-yuan banknote, and shoved it into Zhou Yulang's hand. "Master, this is a hundred yuan. Please accept it."

In the mid-to-late 1980s, a hundred yuan was a huge bill. Zhou Yulang's hands trembled slightly. "Oh, thank you, thank you."

"You're too polite, Master. I should be the one thanking you."

Soon this matter became known to everyone in town. Zhou Yulang told anyone who would listen, "A wealthy tycoon came for a fortune reading, and because my reading was so accurate, they tipped me a hundred yuan right on the spot!"

He said these things simply to elevate his own status. When Dragon-Phoenix heard about it, he sent someone to pass along a message: "Be humble in life. Wealth is sometimes a disaster."

This incident also stirred Seventh Bahtou, Wang Jiaxian, into restless agitation.

Wang Jiaxian had entered the syndicate earlier than I did, but his Bahtou ranking was lower than mine. He always harbored great ambitions, constantly feeling that his talents went unrecognized. Later, upon meeting Grandfather and entering the "River and Lake Syndicate," he hid in a school as a teacher, specializing in fishing for gullible marks like the parents of his students.

Later, incited by Third Bahtou and Fifth Bahtou, he intended to rebel, but ultimately, due to a pricking of conscience, he tipped off Grandfather a night early, thereby escaping execution.

He was of the same type as Third Bahtou—very scholarly, with hair always slicked back, projecting the image of a modest gentleman. After his release from prison, he was the first to find a partner, get married, and have children. However, his wife wasn't very cooperative, continuously giving birth to three girls without being able to produce a son.

Later, he sought out Fourth Bahtou to ask for a secret prescription. Back then, The Seizing and Flying Secret Manual had recorded some medicinal formulas for siring sons.

Fourth Bahtou smiled upon hearing this and said, "Seventh Brother, what era is this? You're still clinging to the old antiques of our 'River and Lake Syndicate.' Those formulas are nothing more than nourishing and strengthening medicines like schisandra and danshen. Our 'River and Lake Syndicate' simply played the odds at fifty-percent probability anyway; it's either a boy or a girl. If the mark happens to give birth to a boy, that's the achievement of our 'River and Lake Syndicate'; if they give birth to a girl, well, that's just the mark's predetermined fate. Have you forgotten how we used to deal with people coming to beg for sons back then?"

Seventh Bahtou smiled helplessly and said, "Of course I remember. I'm just desperate for a son. Grandfather wouldn't let us touch The Seizing and Flying Secret Manual back then, and only you and Fourth Sister-in-law read the whole thing. I thought there might be contents I didn't know about."

"Ha ha. Going around in circles and trapping yourself." Fourth Bahtou smiled as well.

Back when we practiced scams, we frequently encountered people coming to our doors begging for sons.

"Master, please help me look. Is the child my wife is currently carrying a boy?"

Our classic script was: "It should be a boy, but daughters are treasures too."

A mere ten words could make a mark arrive full of expectations and return happily, and regardless of the outcome, they would never blame the fortuneteller.

Under the indoctrination of the feudal ethical dogma that "of the three unfilial acts, having no descendants is the worst," Chinese people particularly loved having sons, especially those who had already given birth to three or four daughters and were burning with anxiety. In the countryside, even during neighborhood quarrels, the side with a son would use this handle to attack the side without one, cursing, "Your ancestors lacked virtue, you won't have a son in this lifetime, you're a broken branch!"

Therefore, a son had to be had, because having a son meant having grandsons, allowing descendants to continue infinitely.

When we uttered the phrase "It should be a boy" to a mark, the mark first received psychological comfort, which stabilized their mood. Otherwise, if we said straight out "No," they would surely storm off and we wouldn't be able to make any money.

Only then would we say the second half: "Daughters are treasures too."

Families steeped in feudal ideology believed that daughters would eventually belong to someone else's family. Raising them with painstaking effort only to end up paying a dowry for them to carry on another family's lineage meant taking a total loss. Generally, ordinary families called girls "little slave girls" as something worthless, and only daughters of wealthy gentry were called "thousands of gold pieces."

When we uttered the phrase "Daughters are treasures too," the mark would inevitably ask with puzzlement, "Master, what do you mean by this?"

We would say with a grave and solemn air, "Judging by the birth characters of the two of you, this pregnancy should yield a son, but I also see another girl beside him—two fruits hanging from a single branch. Which of the two will descend first depends on fate."

"What do you mean?"

At this point, we would pull out the "Picture of Immortal Youths Descending to Earth" that we had prepared beforehand. This picture depicted a large tree with twelve twisted, winding branches. On each branch were drawn four or five fruits bearing children's smiling faces. We would point to a pair of closely adjacent fruits and say, "See that? These two fruits will descend to earth and become your children—a boy and a girl. Neither of them is ordinary mortals; they are both stars from heaven. If it's the boy, he'll ride a big horse and wear red flowers in the future; if it's the girl, she'll marry into a wealthy family and become a high official's wife. You just sit back and wait to enjoy your blessings!"

After this speech, the marks would basically break into radiant smiles.

A few months later, when the child was born, if it truly was a boy, the mark would inevitably come back to express gratitude. If it was a girl, it didn't matter either; the mark wouldn't come looking for trouble. As for whether she would marry into a wealthy family in the future, that was at least eighteen years away, and by that time, no one would care about a fortunetelling incident from years ago.